Wednesday, November 30, 2011

"The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change her future by merely changing her attitude."

--Oprah Winfrey

“O! It’s nice to get up in the morning. But it’s nicer to stay in bed.”

--Harry Lauder

“I have had a holiday, and I'd like to take it up professionally."

--Kylie Minogue

"Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting."

--Cormac McCarthy

“Fashion isn’t just frocks. It’s how we do our houses, our gardens - it’s what we eat and drink.”

--Grace Coddington

“If you are all wrapped up in yourself, you are overdressed.”

--Kate Halverson

“I believe part of the process of figuring yourself out is a way of connecting the dots between the fabulous and influential people around us all, like some sort of hidden constellation—you only have to know where to look.”

--Ashley Olsen

“Long hair minimizes the need for barbers; socks can be done without; one leather jacket solves the coat problem for many years; suspenders are superfluous.”

--Albert Einstein

“All I’ve ever done is dream. That, and only that, has been the meaning of my existence. The only thing I’ve ever really cared about is my inner life. My greatest griefs faded to nothing the moment I opened the window onto my inner self and lost myself in watching. I never tried to be anything other than a dreamer. I never paid any attention to people who told me to go out and live. I belonged always to whatever was far from me and to whatever I could never be. Anything that was not mine, however base, always seemed to be full of poetry. The only thing I ever loved was pure nothingness…”

--Fernando Pessoa

“I got my feet on the ground and I don’t go to sleep to dream.”

--Fiona Apple

“You will recognize your own path when you come upon it because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need.”

--Sara Teasdale

“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t.”

--Albert Camus

“I am still so naive; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?”

--Sylvia Plath

“How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.”

--Anais Nin

“That’s who you really like. The people you can think out loud in front of.”

--John Green

"Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we're quoting."

--John Green

“I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.”

--Marlene Dietrich

“I wouldn't mind living my life capturing the moments of others.”

--Unknown

“If he wrote it he could get rid of it. He had gotten rid of many things by writing about them.”

--Ernest Hemingway, 'Fathers and Sons'

“It pains me to realize I’ll never get to actually live in these well written worlds, but at least I can stay for a little while.”

--Unknown

“I guess that’s the beauty of books. When they finish they don’t really finish.”

--Markus Zusak

“Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.”

--Neil Gaiman

“Anyone who knows me, should learn to know me again;

For I am like the Moon,

you will see me with new face everyday.”

--Rumi

“I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.”

--Rumi

“Appreciate how rare and full of potential your situation is in this world, then take joy in it, and use it to your best advantage.”

--Dalai Lama

“As long as one keeps searching, the answers come.”

--Joan Baez

“Very little is needed to make a happy life. It is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”

--Marcus Aurelius

“It is not about how others are or how society is. The most important thing is to ask yourself, “What should I do?” and “What can I do?” One who stands up with moral courage and conviction can change society and create waves of transformation around the world.”

--Daisaku Ikeda

“So I dressed with remaining ceramics, furniture and objects; so I placed a message in each, a small story, at times ironic and obviously wordless, but audible to those who believe in poetry.”

Monday, November 14, 2011

in the sleepiness of night I feel like I can say anything. you feel good drunk in the dark. you feel good in my dreams. you are still swelling and ghosting while I am waiting for you. I’ve tried to gather greater amounts of strength than fifths of vodka or offering clumsy poems to lonely people.

God, it’s so sad when the people don’t feel like poems anymore.

In high school I scrambled after them, waited and watched, fell in love with people who had no idea it was in me to be so brave. And what a dangerous thing it is to want someone against all the odds, right? How I listened tentatively to every person who poured secrets in hallways they didn’t know I was listening in. I could count on all your hands the strangers I’ve wanted to kiss.

But this isn’t about them. It’s about the things you’ve said to me in secret when you were younger, waiting for this world to gobble you up, spit your love out like sunflower seeds in summer when the days go on and on forever. How I like the way you move in your sleep. I like the way you touch the ends of my hair sometimes when you’re thinking about things I’m trying my hardest to figure out without asking. I’ve never wanted someone so much all of the time. Tell me this could chip the moon, this could send shivers down the spine of all those saps we ever loved before. Is it lonely to chase after things that you can only get so close to? tossing wishes into wells, these are the things that break days. guilt and moments you can’t have when you want them most, this is the stuff in jazz music and hope, the stuff that makes poets and fills notebooks. Tell me, could the chaos ever accept you too?

Saturday, November 12, 2011

“We all basically have a lot of magic; it’s only those of us who choose to accept it that really understand it. It’s there for everyone.”

--Stevie Nicks

“Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”

--Rumi

“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.”

--Ernest Hemingway

“The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure….you are above everything distressing.”

--Spinoza

“The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude.”

--Voltaire

“Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.”

--Iris Murdoch

“And the rest is rust and stardust.”

--Vladimir Nabokov, 'Lolita'

"I have dined with kings, I've been offered wings, and I've never been too impressed."

--Bob Dylan

“You can’t give up something you really believe in for financial reasons. If you die by the roadside - so be it. But at least you know you’ve tried. Ten minutes in the music scene was the equal of one hundred years outside of it.”

--Robert Plant

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first.”

--Jim Morrison

“You think you’re lost without any place left to go, like you need one of those kisses long and slow. At first glance it’s not what it seems, but there’s some things that I just know, like you take two sugars with a splash of cream. Take a guess where I stand. Pick a number from one to two. Take a look at the back of your hand. Just like you know it, you know me too.”

--Dwight Yoakum, 'The Back of Your Hand'

“The goal in life is to discover that you’ve always been where you were supposed to be.”

--Aldous Huxley

“The quickest way to know a woman is to go shopping with her.”

--Marcelene Cox

“You’re thinking too much. Just let it flow.”

--E. Paluszak

“If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel— as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them—wherever you go.”

--Anthony Bourdain

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.”

--Alan Alda

“When you are here and now, sitting totally, not jumping ahead, the miracle has happened. To be in the moment is the miracle.”

--Osho

“In my soul, I am still that small child who did not care about anything else but the beautiful colors of a rainbow.”

--Papiha Ghosh

“I promise myself that I will enjoy every minute of the day that is given me to live.”

--Thich Nhat Hanh

“All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there. You are so weak. Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave until it gets to shore.”

--Rumi

“If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.”

--Tallulah Bankhead

“The sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Idiots are always dead sure about every damn thing.”

--Jaggi Vasudev

“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”

--Willa Cather

“Everyone has ocean’s to fly, if they have the heart to do it. Is it reckless? Maybe. But what do dreams know of boundaries?”

--Amelia Earhart

“The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people who get lost.”

--Henry David Thoreau

“Gastronomical perfection can be reached in these combinations: one person dining alone, usually upon a couch or a hill side; two people, of no matter what sex or age, dining in a good restaurant; six people, of no matter what sex or age, dining in a good home.”

--M.F.K. Fisher, 'An Alphabet for Gourmets'

“..But the moment I got back in my car I knew I would never see him again, ever. It suddenly seemed obvious to me that the whole world, especially Los Angeles, was designed to protect me from these people I was meeting. There was no law against knowing them, but it wouldn’t happen. LA isn’t a walking city, or a subway city, so if someone isn’t in my house or my car we’ll never be together, not even for a moment. And just to be absolutely sure of that, when I leave my car my iPhone escorts me, letting everyone else in the post office know that I’m not really with them, I’m with my own people, who are so hilarious that I can’t help smiling to myself as I text them back.”